UBI will cycle in the bottom of the economy.

When you give a rich person more money they buy assets and increase their wealth, it does not impact their spending activity and has no measurable impact on economic activity.

When you give a middle income person more money they buy something new or pay down debts. Buying something new stimulates economic activity, but paying down debts is really just another wealth transfer to the banks which are owned by rich people.

When you give money to low income people they spend it. They have unmet needs and always have something they can spend that money on. That money then generates economic activity.

Increasing economic activity is what all of the interest rate and inflation talk is about. If you get people spending money that generates activity which increases wages, increases income, and decreases wealth inequality.

A good example is during the GFC the Australian government gave low income people $750AUD, about $350USD. The prime minister asked people to spend this money rather than save it. People bought a bunch of things, in the people I knew it was mostly TVs and new clothes, things you can put off for ages but benefit from whenever you buy them. All of this purchasing stimulated the economy, leading to Australia being less impacted than almost any other G7 nation. We recovered very quickly and boomed from there.

If you want a more long term example look at any welfare. If you have extremely poor people they just die. They are underfed, have weak immune systems, and they face imminent death. They can’t access housing so they end up on the street. They have tonnes of inteactions with police and end up in the criminal justice system. They end up having their lives ruined and being purely a drain economically. They suffer.

If you give them enough money to have housing and food they are not going to be as costly to manage. They won’t require policing, they won’t get sick as often, and they will suffer less. Will this increase the competition for the lowest cost housing? Yes, but the answer to that is to build more housing. Even with the impact to housing cost this will not result in 100% of that payment going to landlords. People don’t pay their whole income for rent, they will buy food and other needs first, so if they are faced with too high a rent cost they will remain unhoused but at least tbey will eat.